Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s former head of retail investment banking in Europe has joined a new team at EY, as the accountancy firm looks to rapidly grow its team of advisory bankers.

Blaise Girard, formerly a managing director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, joined EY at the start of this month, according to people familiar with the matter.

He is working with Alex Masters, a former Rothschild managing director who arrived at EY in January. Both have joined the accountancy giant as partners and will lead the firm’s efforts in M&A for consumer retail across Europe, a new team for EY.

Heath followed in the footsteps of fellow former investment bankers Nam Quach, previously a managing director at UBS, and Marc Middleton, a former partner and managing director at Rothschild, both of whom joined EY in October last year.

Girard was a director of consumer and retail investment banking at Merrill Lynch between 1998 and 2005, before being made head of retail at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in 2006. He left the bank in October 2012 to set up Cosmic Capital, according to his LinkedIn profile.

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He will sit next to Masters, who worked at Rothschild between 1999 and 2012 and was head of the consumer and retail coverage group in Asia between 2008 and 2011.

Professional service firms EY, KPMG and PwC have stepped up their efforts to snatch a slice of the M&A market from investment banks this year, predominantly by hiring the banks’ own talent.

Senior switches in the past year have included those of Jefferies’ real estate chief Simon Hampton, who is now with PwC, and Richard Gostling, head of business services at Goldman Sachs, who was hired by KPMG.

While deals above $1 billion remain almost exclusively the terrain of more established investment banks or advisory boutiques, the accountancy firms advised on 12.4% of announced UK M&A deals by value in the year to June 6, according to Dealogic – a post-crisis high.

The increase was largely driven by EY’s role on big UK deals, including Vodafone’s acquisition of Ono.